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FEATURE -- INCURSIONS AND EXCURSIONS 31
Outdoor education programs -- from school-
holiday expeditions to activities integrated
as part of the curriculum -- provide unique
opportunities for students to develop a
range of understandings and capabilities.
Outdoor education encourages students to
connect with nature, understand environ-
mental issues, learn more about Indigenous
culture, and acquire planning and risk man-
agement skills.
Reconnecting with nature
There is a growing concern on the part of
youth specialists, educationalists, parents
and the public that many young people are
retreating into a virtual world and are los-
ing contact with reality, leading to social
dislocation and isolation.
It has been argued that separation from
nature is an important factor in some of
the rising ailments of some young people,
including obesity and depression, higher
rates of physical and emotional illness,
attention difficulties, a diminished use of
the senses which are necessary for learning
and creativity, a decline of social interaction
and a loss of spirituality.
Outdoor education provides the only
opportunity in the education of young people
to reconnect with the natural world, ensuring
students learn to feel comfortable in nature
both day and night, develop an understand-
ing of natural history and systems, and are
challenged to consider the role and place of
humanity in the natural order of things.
In the semi-wilderness, forced to come to
terms with the absence of mobile phone and
internet reception, students even come to
appreciate the lack of distraction, and have
the opportunity to learn more about them-
selves and their relationships with others.
Outdoor education is in no way anti-tech-
nology -- developments such as satellite tele-
phones have made possible outdoor journeys
that would have been too risky in the past
-- but outdoor education does enable students
to evaluate the role of technology in modern
life, with a particular emphasis upon how
technology shapes our personal responses
and relationships to the natural environment.
Immersion in the environment
Today's young people, as they move into
adulthood, will face momentous issues of
responding to environmental degradation,
climate change and the role of human activity
in causing or exacerbating global warming.
Responses to environmental issues must
be founded in students' understandings
developed across a range of disciplines and
domains of learning. When geography and
environmental science students go into the
bush as objective scientific observers, they
are learning important skills in scientific
methodology -- but they are outside look-
ing in. Students in outdoor education are
inside looking out. They are immersed in
the environment. Their learning about the
environment combines both affective and
cognitive modes of acquiring knowledge
-- while immersed in the environment they
are both building and analysing their own
relationship with the landscape.
In our daily lives what all of us do in
practice relates only in part to academic
learning. What we do is driven also by
emotive resonances and even spiritual relat-
edness. Western culture has historically
seen itself as intruding on and subjugating
nature. Young people need to understand
themselves as part of nature, if they are to
feel deeply the need to change our global
lifestyle and practices in order to save the
planet.
The assessment and management
of risk
School leavers need to develop an awareness
of risk, which they will have to face in their
lives, especially between the ages of 15 and
24, and learn how to manage it.
Outdoor activities necessarily contain
an element of real risk. If there is no risk
there is no challenge, and challenge is at the
heart of outdoor education. It is the prin-
cipal responsibility of the outdoor educa-
tion provider to minimise risk, and students
should be made aware of the risk minimisa-
tion planning and procedures which have
and are being followed by the organisers as
part of their own learning about risk.
Students also need to be able to assess
their ow n level of competence as well as
correctly to assess the hazards and the
likelihood of changing levels of hazard in
an environment; for example, if a group
comes to a swollen river which they need
to cross, there is clearly a risk which has
to be assessed. It may be that a risky river
crossing can only be avoided by an extra
20-kilometre walk in quite difficult terrain
and an arrival at the destination two days
late. The seriousness of the risk involved in
crossing the river has to be assessed care-
fully as does the skill, experience and fitness
of all members of the group. It then has to be
weighed up against the effort and possible
hazard involved in the 20-kilometre walk.
Risk assessment and management in the
bush can be taught and learned and includes
how judgements can be impaired by the
influence of peer pressure, fatigue or haste.
Outdoor education teaches risk assessment
as a process in a safely monitored context,
but one where real consequences are evident
and feedback mechanisms are strong to
facilitate effective learning. The provision of
properly trained staff who are also educators
accompanying each group is important from
a risk minimisation point of view, but also
so that students can be properly educated in
coping with risk as and after they confront it.
The processes underpinning astute judge-
ment are consistent, whether the setting is in
the bush, at the beach, driving a car on a wet
night, or at a party. There is real transfer of
the lessons learnt in outdoor education to
students' wider and future lives.
Bush awareness in the adult
population
It has been understood at least since the
publication of Russel Ward's The Austral-
ian Legend that white Australians were one
of the most urbanised peoples in the world,
but maintained the myth, at least before the
changing of Australian society by post-war
immigration, that they were really country
people who were forced to live in cities and
that their natural home was the bush. It is per-
haps this heritage that has led to Australians'